


We're A Long Way From Where We Started, But We're Alright

by arringtondblake



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag 4x05, F/M, Fluff, He knows her too well, History, established realationship, pseudo established realationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arringtondblake/pseuds/arringtondblake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag to 4x05.  </p><p>He remembers teaching her that trick with the bottle, his hands on her hips while he showed her how to toss it over her shoulder.  The exact same way 'Lexi' is doing it now.  Then her eyes flash when he calls her sweetheart and knows, he just knows.  It’s Audrey.  It’s not just Audrey as someone else, like Sarah or Lucy... it is Audrey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're A Long Way From Where We Started, But We're Alright

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: They aren't mine in any way, shape, form, or monetary fashion. I just like to play with them.
> 
> A/N: This came to me while watching 4x05 and I couldn't let it go. There are spoilers ahead for the fourth season. I'm new to this fandom, if anyone has any Duke/Audrey Fic's to rec, or communities....I'd love to know. Thanks!

     They’re at the Gull when Duke first realizes that something is off about this new Audrey-ish.

     Lexi had demanded on eating before she changed into Audrey’s ‘painfully dull clothes’, which lead to Jennifer insisting on a drink. Apparently being off her meds allowed Jennifer a newfound penchant for alcohol that the Gull had become the facilitator of.

     Jennifer’s forearms are pressed against the bar top and her feet are kicking rhythmically against the side of the bar stool. She calls, “Hey Duke? Is you’re…,” she gestures with her hands, waving them whimsically in front of her torso, as if searching for a more suitable word to describe Duke and Wade’s relationship. She settles on, “brother-ish, around here somewhere? I could really go for whatever it was he made me the other night… I can’t remember the name…it had tequila and …. Something fruity and some other kind of liquor…”

     “I never say no to a lad-” Duke starts. He's interrupted when Lexi speaks up. She is almost smiling and twirling a lock of her hair like a lovesick schoolgirl.

     "I'll have you know, I’m a pretty good bar keep,” she interrupts , sliding off the stool, in a move that makes her skirt slide a touch too high up her thigh.

     As much as Duke wants it to be Audrey, wants it to be her skin, it isn’t. The consolation of freckles on her upper thigh, that he only tasted once, is missing. The scar across her knee that Audrey wore like battle wound, a souvenir from her kidnapping less than a year previous, is absent. He used to kiss it better.

     “Ya don’t mind do ya D-uk-e?” Lexi tosses over her shoulder, drawing his name out like she doesn’t quite remember it. She moves quickly behind the bar, pressing her blue jean skirt down with her palm.

      Duke pulls his eyes to her face with a shake of his head and shrugs, his shoulders moving his frame in one slow movement. He pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and gestures toward the back of the bar. “Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he quips. He turns back toward the kitchen to snag some leftovers from the night before and has only taken a step when Jennifer pipes up.

     “It was that bottle. I have a memory for details…like when I see things,” she explains in a ramble, “Hey, you know those things they do anytime a bar is on TV, like Coyote Ugly, where they like do cool tricks with the bottles. I’ve always wondered if that was a real thing. Is it? Or is that just like some Hollywood myth?”

     “I can do a couple,” Lexi says a bit cockily, rolling her shoulders back, “Here, watch this.”

     And Duke watches. He watches as she tightens the stopper on the bottle with a twist of her fingers, all the way to the right with a pull back to make sure it locks. He watches as she tests the weight of the bottle against her palm and squares her stance. Watches still, as she tosses it up behind her back and over her left shoulder. Lexi catches it in her left hand with a flourish and a satisfied smirk. A crease still sits between her eyebrows like she’s concentrating too hard, especially for a bartender. Duke wonders if she wasn't quite sure she could do it.

     “Like what you see?” Lexi smiles, with a crude shake of her hip, toward Duke.

     She carries herself differently from Audrey, her weight settled back on her heels.  Her forearm rests on the bar top, bottle dangling from her hand.

     The memory hits him like a ton of bricks. Duke had never been one for remembering details until Audrey came around. Now, as he remembers, he can almost see the exact formation of the rough, grey rain drops that had taken over Haven on that night. He can remember exactly how Audrey had been poised, hunkered down close to the bar top as she tried to gracefully shovel shrimp alfredo into her mouth. He can almost count the number of specks in the green jersey knit t-shirt, she had worn that night. He can clearly recall that she didn't have a bra on underneath.

     He had closed the bar early, pushing the last of the drunks out around ten in hopes of some peace and quiet when Audrey had waltzed in asking if there were any left overs. He’d put together the shrimp and pasta, acting like it was on the menu somewhere instead of admitting that he made some most nights on the off chance she might need some chow. He knew it was her favorite.

     He had asked if she wanted a drink and she’d laughed, the dry one that was a little dark. Her eyebrow had arched up as she said, “I think this whole town needs a drink, a stiff one.”

     He chuckled, tossing his head back a little, “True, true. But what’s _your_ poison?”

     He remembers the exact way she looked up at him, her fork abandoned on her plate, head posed on her hand, her blonde hair peaking over her shoulder. His fingers had itched to push it back. She had that look in her eye, the one that was desperate and sad and dark; the one that came when she got sick of not knowing who she was.

     “Do I even know, really? Audrey Parker liked scotch, a margarita if she had to. Apple Orchard out of the bottle….but me. Who knows.” She trailed off with a high pitched noise somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

     She had a tendency to do this every now and again, fall apart and then look up at him like he could put everything back together again, like he had all the answers. All he wanted to do was wrap her up in cotton and keep her from the world. She’d never let him. She was too strong for her own good. It was part of the reason he loved her.

     “Then why don’t we find out?” He said, aiming to get that look off her face.

     She quirked an eyebrow at him.

     “We’ll try everything you want until you find something you like."

      She had smiled, he can remember that smile like it was yesterday. He can pick out all the differences in this new…this Lexie’s smile. The way it’s a little too easy, a little too tried. Audrey never smiled like that. If Audrey actually smiled it was a rush but uncertain all at once. Bright. Genuine.

     “You trying to get me drunk, Crocker?” She’d quipped.

     He remembers grinning, beckoning her over with a finger and a retort, “Come on sweetheart, don’t make me triple dog dare you.”

     Her eyes had lit up, the way they always did when he tossed around that term of endearment. Her cheeks would flush and she’d look at him like she was simultaneously scolding him and begging him to do it again. She looked away with single chuckle he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to hear. She took a last bite of Alfredo, snapping the shrimp into her mouth with a slurp that made him ache down to his toes, before she walked around the bar.

     “What first?” She stood in front of him with a determined grin, her hands low on her hips as she regarded the bottles that were kept under the bar top in a long line.

     They were three homemade cocktails in when he started showing off, tossing bottles and shakers. He remembers notching her close to his body, his hand pressed low on the front of her hip. His pointer finger rested against her bare skin, revealed from where her shirt had risen up. He’d wrapped his hand around hers over the long glass bottle of vodka. He remembers showing her how to secure the stopper, find the center of the bottle by weighing it against her palm. He showed her how to flip it, making the movement slow and deliberate, under her arm and over her shoulder. He remembers her smile bright, easy, and confident when she caught the bottle. She turned in his arms. Her fist, which was in the air in accomplishment, brushed against his chest. Their eyes met and he wanted to kiss her, almost did, before settling on brushing that strip of hair behind her ear. She’d ducked her head, in the way she always did when she felt a little shy. She came close and looked up at him through long lashes. He thought maybe she wanted to kiss him, too.

     Audrey had cleared her throat and taken a step back, “show me how to do it with the shaker?” She asked, blushing when she realized just how dirty it sounded, “that’s not what I meant,” she had scolded when he raised his eyebrows provocatively.

     “Duke. Hellooo Duke,” Jennifer calls to him, sipping her drink, as she waves at him, “You clocked out on us for a minute there.”

     Lexi looks at him with a quirked brow and an exasperated expression, “Yeah…was there like food…happening,” she asks.

     Duke shakes his head purposefully, hoping it will help him focus on the present.

     “Right,” he rocks back on his heels and pushes his hands deep into his blue jean pockets, “Yeah.” It comes out a little hoarse, “Anyone feel like shrimp?”

     He swears that Lexi’s mouth quirks up before she says, “Shrimp. Gross. Is fish like a Maine…thing.”

      “Yeah.”

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

      “How well do you know this guy?” the boy in his body asks.

     Duke might not have said the words, but he can still see everything, like sitting in the back seat of his own life. He can see the way her eyes say ‘too well’ even though she actually says, “I’m sorry Duke.”

     He wants to scream, to break through this person’s body and order her away, when she does it herself. She steps out of the way and moves to the side with a smooth shift.

     Even as the pain rushes through his body, the feeling of raw power, the words knock around in his head. “I’m sorry Duke.” The way she said them. It wasn't that she was sorry that she almost killed him, but that she was sorry she caused him pain. When Duke comes to, Lexi's crouched against the corner with her hands out in front of her, defensive. It's what he and Audrey had decided on one late night when they fathomed the possibility that he may one day kill her (whether he wanted to or not.) He remembers how argumentative Audrey had been. She was against the whole idea, certain he would never hurt her. She had caved when he told her that it’d make him feel better.

     When Duke catches her eye, he expects to see fear. Fear from a girl he barely knows who just watched him turn into a monster. She isn't fearful. She's sad and concerned. She simultaneously looks like she wants to stay where she is and wants to bring him into her arms and never let go. Duke knows that something is up. That reaction is all Audrey and in the past iterations of this cycle she had been the same at the core, but she hadn’t remembered what the past 'hers' did. There is no way this …Lexi could know about his curse as intimately as his Audrey had.

     “Relax sweetheart, it’s me,” Duke says to her. His voice strained and low.

     Duke watches her eyes light up just a little bit, her lips becoming a small smile. She bites her lip and her cheeks flush red.

     He knows that expression. The first time he knew that, that specific ‘I’m smiling but I’m not smiling smile’ was just for him, was the night of her abduction. Nathan had dropped her off and left. She’d gone inside, and come back out an hour later. He had been watching the stairs to the apartment from his place at the bar, his shot gun loaded and cocked, ready to take out anyone that came for her again. She’d looked so lost on the front deck, in pajama pants and a short sleeve t-shirt. The wind dragged goose bumps along her arm. Her hair was wet from her shower, wrapped on top of her head in a bun that looked like a knot. Audrey had looked down at him. Her eyes locked on his. He walked up the stairs before he even realized he was doing it. They didn’t say much, but she let had let him pick her up and tuck her up in bed. He remembers the way her whole body relaxed when he tucked her sheet up under her chin. When he’d pressed, ‘sweetheart', with a kiss to her forehead, her nose, before he settled on top of the covers, beside her. She had smiled that smiled, and he knew it was just for him.

     She did it, that smile, again a week later when he kissed the word into her shoulder, his arms wrapped around her waist as he held her in his lap. And again when she saw he was still there in the morning.

     He pulls himself off of memory lane, once again, gives Lexi a long glace, and he knows. He just knows. It’s Audrey. It’s not just Audrey as someone else, like Sarah or Lucy... it is Audrey..

     All the reasons she would fake being someone else, the smarts, it would have taken to pull that off…the plan reeks of Audrey. He doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

     He doesn’t get a chance to talk to her until he wraps stuff up back at the Gull. He watches her face, the set of her shoulders as she tells him she was afraid; he’s only seen Audrey scared twice once after some sicko skin walker beat the crap out of her in a dingy basement, after the woman she’d talked with through the whole ordeal, was burned to death and once when she knew she was going to leave all of them. He’d seen Sarah stand down a guy at gun point in a hallway. If there’s anything the Audreys have been, brave is at the heart of it.

  
      There’s a voice in the back of his head that says he might be wrong, it might be wishful thinking, and then he sees her shoulders drop. Her voice sounds more like Audrey’s when she say’s , “damn it Duke.”

     She turns around and she’s in his arms in one move. His mind is still catching up with the fact that he was right. That he just invited another woman into his home, because he couldn’t truly believe Audery was really here. Her body feels different pressed against him, her build is different from the other Audrey but she fits just the same. He doesn’t think she imagines the feel of her lips against his neck.

      “We can’t talk here,” she says into his ear.  It sounds a lot like, “come upstairs.”

     It’s almost surreal, how this woman who looks unfamiliar in this place navigates her way around Audrey’s loft like it’s the back of her hand. He takes up his usual place on the far side of the couch. Lexi hides behind a room divider set up behind her bed, changing out of her outfit into a white ribbed under shirt that he’s pretty sure he left here ages ago. She has it knotted above the barely legal shorts she wears. After a moment of fishing around, moving pillows and ducking under chairs, she finds his beige cardigan. She slips it on over her arms and take a deep breath. He sees her whole body relax.

     “I thought Jennifer might have gotten rid of it,” her voice has a little bit of panic to it and he almost laughs at the absurdity of it all.

     She’s been through hell knows what, is lying to half the town, and she’s worried that she lost his cardigan.

     “It still smells like you,” she says wistfully, her nose pressed against the collar, eyes closed.

     In his gut, he wants to grab her, carry her to the bed, bury himself in her, celebrate her …whatever this is... return.  When he looks at her, blocks out everything else, it feels like a betrayal, to want this girl who looks nothing like the woman he was in love with. It’s a weird juxtaposition, because he knows his love is inside the wrong shell.

     Lexi is the iteration of his ideal woman, in high school, even after - the spunky, bartender with double toned hair and too many piercings. But he misses Audrey's just blonde hair and her conservative blouses and jeans.  How she looked like the challenge she was.

     She makes a cup of coffee, going through the motions slowly, puttering around to find each item and put it back in its old place. She looks a little lost, like a little girl when she sits on the edge of the sofa, tucks her feet up underneath her.

     “How long has it been for you?” She asks.

     He sighs, turning towards her, “They tell me six months, now six months and a couple weeks. But it felt like minutes. You?”

     She shakes her head like she doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to accept it. Like she isn’t sure how to.

     “I was aware that time was passing…but, it doesn’t add up. I’d leave the bar and come back…but it wasn’t really a day,” is all she says.

     He reaches out and places a hand on her knee, rubbing his thumb in circles over her bare skin.

     “We were desperate to find you,” he says, unable to find another way to put it into words, and then, when she looks away, “Look, I know publically lying to everyone is the best way, but Nathan was…we were destroyed Audrey…we thought we had killed you. I know you think that we would’ve found a way to move on…but I’m not…I don’t have the same faith in that that you do.”

     “I know,” she keens, her eyes wet, the moisture gathering on her eyelashes like dew, “I knew as soon as I saw you, but I couldn’t let them… I couldn’t kill him. Kill you,” she holds up her hand when he goes to continue, “They would have, just to make sure. As soon as Nathan hit the ground. Even if it will end the trouble and we don’t know that it will, it was…is the best way.” She wipes at the few tears that drip down her cheeks.

    “Aud-“

     She presses a finger against his lips to shush him, “It had to look believable.”

      “And when it tears you apart? When it comes to a head? What then Audrey?” He raises his voice and regrets it when she jerks back, “I’m sorry-”

     “I don’t know Duke. I don’t know,” she says a little exasperatedly, a little wildly, “I didn’t have a lot of time to think things out-”

     “Hey,” he coos, scooting closer to her and pushing her hair back out of her face, he hates how desperate she looks, how broken, “we’ll figure it out. We have a knack for figuring these things out,” he promises.

     She takes a sip of her coffee a little too fast, wincing at the heat.

     “How’d you know? Really.” She emphasizes, looking up at him, “the curse but…was that It I mean…?”

     He moves off the sofa, rocking up on his heels, as if the energy is too much.

     “Where were the faults in your acting?” he says it lightly. She thaws a little, “At first? The bar, the bottle,” he smiles.

     “You remember that,” she rolls her eyes, as if she’s disappointed that she was caught on a technicality.

     “Hard to forget, sweetheart,” his body heats when her eyes do that thing he loves, “it was that too... the way you flushed when I called you sweetheart. And when we were in the hospital.” She blushes, “The curse was the final straw but you know that.”

     She nods, “do you think he…”

     “No. I don’t think Nathan knows.” He cuts off quickly.

     She places the coffee on the low table in front of the couch.

     “I don’t really want to talk about that right now, I want…”

     He quirks an eyebrow at her, scoots in a little closer, “yeah sweetheart?”

     “I don’t look the same,” she says, “I know this is weird…but…”

     “It’ll take some getting used to,” he says bluntly, but when she cast her eyes down, he tilts her chin towards him, “we have some lost time to make up for.

     Her laugh makes his heart feel a little lighter. He may not know what they’re going to do in the morning, but he knows how he’s going to take care of her now.

**Author's Note:**

> Reviews are good for my soul and my muse. I'd love to know what you're thinking!


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